 Coming up on DTNS weep for the headphone jack my friends why voice assistants need to spy on you and Should an AI be able to get a patent for its own inventions This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday August 1st 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt from the shores of Lake Merritt I'm Justin Robert Young and From the LA County area and the show's producer Roger Jane Sarah Lane on the second of three days off working on some other projects right now. She'll be back on Monday But we were just having a wonderful conversation of what we suspect might show up at a new theme park that Universal Studios is apparently developing out in Orlando That's on good day internet And the only way to get that is to become a member at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the US Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook's acquisitions The FTC wants to determine if Facebook bought rivals mainly in order to prevent them from becoming a threat to Facebook's business Which could fall afoul of regulations Tyler Blevins aka Ninja one of Twitch's most popular streamers announced he's moving his stream Exclusively to Microsoft Mixer Microsoft Mixer is a product that Microsoft has to have people stream their video games too If you didn't know he said his streams will be exactly the same so more fortnight Ninja will appear at Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend too, which is being streamed live on YouTube So he's he's all over the map Google confirmed it's testing play pass in the Play Store a $4 and 99 cent monthly service that offers a library of games and apps Apps and play pass would have ads removed and include all in-app purchases as well screenshots of the test list Features a fitness tracker premium music apps and puzzle games That would be included. Yes. All right. Let's talk a little bit about Intel big announcement Intel announced the first 11 processors in its 10th generation ice lake line This is for thin and light laptops ice lake is built on Intel's 10 nanometer sunny Cove architecture Which Intel claims can handle 18% more instructions per clock along with larger L1 and L2 cash sunny Cove also brings Intel's AVX 512 deep learning Boost which speeds up automatic image enhancements photo indexing media post-processing a few other AI tasks So bringing in better battery efficiency more power and a lot more AI capability to these thin and lights The model numbers will get even longer too In fact the verge and I believe in Nantec both had really good how to figure out what the model number means decoding rings but basically You're going to end up with three different graphic options with ice lake chips If you see g7 in the model number that means you're getting 64 execution units g4 means 48 Execution units both of those models have the iris plus graphics if you see g1 That means not iris plus and just 32 execution units As usual the Y series chips won't have a Y in the model number name But the Y series chips will be meant for slim and efficient machines They're coming rated for 9 watts or 12 watts, which is bigger than the last round and for the first time There'll be a quad core Y series model U series chips will be geared towards ultra portables rated for 15 watts or 25 watts ice lake also includes support for Wi-Fi 6 and up to 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports so that doesn't have to be bolted on afterwards That's a little more efficient as well 10th gen ice lake chips will arrive in 35 laptops including Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 Acer Swift 5 and a bunch of others You know the upshot here is if you're looking for a portable if you're looking for a 2-in-1 or a thin and light Ultra portable you're gonna have some bunch more capabilities once these Intel chips show up Yeah Does it mean that I need to get a new laptop though Tom? No It doesn't they're not that much better It means if you're in the market for a new laptop Maybe hold off until these these hit the the market before you upgrade But I don't think you have to go ditch your your existing laptop if it's doing well for you Roger, I know you're you follow this chip stuff really closely This feel like just a normal announcement. Does it have you excited with what's your feeling in terms of excitement? You know, it's something expect I think the most Exciting part is that they're getting their 10 nanometer process down to the part where they can start, you know regularly producing out these chips And these are for and these chips are intended for the mobile market So they're they're not performance screamers, right? You're not gonna be gaming You're not gonna do any heavy workload But if you're looking for something that does everything you want wanted to but uses a lot less juice while it does it These definitely are the products that Intel wants to put forward I guess really what's what's what will be fun to look at is to see what they come out in terms of desktop chips Later on when they get to that point, but right now it's it feels like they just want to make sure they got this process down They get these chips out You know non-tech the early results is at most 18% Roughly like kind of what what Intel spec'd out in terms of performance and advantage But you know, it's still early and those were just test samples that they were letting journalists play around with We'll have to wait until the actual production units come out that People and spend more time on stuff a couple hours to get a real feel of of where these are at in the performance scale So yeah, if you're a chip head, there's some interesting stuff to look at here If you're just wanting to know Whether to buy a laptop again, don't ditch the laptop you have if it's working great But if you're in the market to buy a new one and you're looking for two-in-ones on ultra lights and thin and lights Maybe wait until these this new generation shows up and evaluate them Sanmobile.com claims leaks that Sorry claims a leaked render of a USB C to mini jack adapter comes from Samsung and is meant to be bundled with the fourth Common Galaxy note 10 and 10 plus if valid this means that the new note does not have a headphone jack Samsung has an announcement schedule for August 7 somebody check on nil I but tell Anybody talk to him. Is he okay? Is he all right? Yeah, there there is some wailing and gnashing of teeth going out on out there because If you don't know a lot of folks who are fans of the note 10 often point to the fact that while my note 10 Still has a headphone jack as a point of pride And yes, we are not yet in the world where nobody needs a headphone jack but these flagship phones very often can again give you a dongle for your USB C port or most most likely they did it with with With Samsung models that had headphone jacks they gave you wireless earbuds free with purchase as a promote as a short-time promotion I will guarantee you they will do that with the galaxy note 10 and 10 plus if this turns out to be a true render Which seems like it should We're gonna find out next week, of course, but man, I I Love the headphone jack. I'm using one right now on a tablet To to play these these sorts of sound effects and and and music cues and stuff. It is necessary sometimes But I also know the wave of the future is good reliable wireless and if you can bring the price down Make it a little lighter provide me some extra features and not have to put that headphone jack apparatus in there I think it's sometimes a reasonable trade-off. I I don't want to Step on to this holy war battlefield for which some folks really like to rage I know that it is a very very particular interest for some people that there is a Feeling of betrayal by some of these companies that they have abandoned a piece of technology that always works and never needs to be charged However, it's becoming more of a niche element of phones You are going to have to seek out a phone to do it because I do believe like you said Tom that this is just The way the technology is going and I have to say I despite the fact that I've recently gone a run of losing them I really like my airpods. I like the idea that I can just pull them out and it stops Playing and again, these are things. I like the fact that I never get them caught on my handle of my suitcase And they rip violently out of my ear There are just things that I Appreciate about wireless you can do things with certain wireless that if you get the battery at a certain point Which I think it's close to now Then it is for me a preverable experience and that just looks like we're we're going with all of it Yeah, and the headphone jack hasn't been the headphone jack on phones for a while There are things that I plug into it that it's like I don't understand that because it's a smart jack It's not an actual fully implemented analog jack and once that happened. I became less attached to it It's kind of the same thing that happened when I'm like damn it They're getting rid of the the component video for HDMI, but that's that's digital You know what? We all got used to it and it has its downsides. Don't get me wrong But I imagine we'll get used to this a Report from counterpoint research shows that overall smartphone shipments declined 1% to 360 million units in Q2 2019 That's the 7th consecutive quarter of decline. So if it hasn't sunk in yet The smartphone market has reached its peak the report found that the combined market share of Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Oppo vivo Xiaomi and real me reached a new high of 42% even as smartphone shipments in China fell 9% so the only Manufacturers doing well in the smartphone market right now are the Chinese manufacturers Samsung still remains the market share leader kind of feels like Nokia, you know mid 2000s It even grew shipments 7.1% on the year though. So that's good. Huawei remained at number two growing its shipments 4.6% The impact of US trade sanctions probably not going to be felt until Q3 So we will see what happens in the next quarter if Huawei can hold on to that number two spot Apple saw its third quarter of decline with shipments falling 11% on the year But did remain number three and following massive growth in India You may have heard me mention the Chinese OEM real me just now real me grew shipments more than 800% on the air I think like 848% to enter the top 10 Because they're targeting India there real me is has moved into India in a big way strategy analytics had their numbers out They showed an identical top five numbers varied in percentage points They estimate a 3% decline overall in the smartphone market, but essentially The same conclusions can be drawn for both sets of numbers, which is no surprise Justin the smartphone market is is not a vibrant market anymore. It's a commodity. That's what it is Yeah, it's just look you're gonna get a lot of phones that are the good news is that it's never been a better time to have Multiple phones or buy cheaper phones that have really really really good close to the high-end Functionality and features because that's what happens in a commodity market is the difference between the top the middle and the bottom Gets shorter and shorter and shorter and the price tags get lower lower and lower I don't know where we're going with this, but you know, we had an interesting conversation before The show about like hey look we are we are kind of fresh out of the horses that galloped with us for a decade and a half of Growth hardware industries and this is another example of one of them the smartphone slowing down. Yeah It shouldn't really be a shock and like we saw Nokia and BlackBerry recede in the advance of Samsung LG and Apple We're seeing Samsung and Apple recede in the advance of these new commodity makers and that's just the evolution of the marketplace It's not because they're in China It's because these are companies that figured out how to make commodities at a cheaper price point And I don't think Apple cares Samsung probably does because Samsung tries to do the commodity market and the flagship market But Apple's only ever been in the flagship market. So as long as they they can keep selling their average price per unit That's that's all they're gonna care about is bringing in that money as they transition into a services company anyway They just need to have enough of those models out there That they can sell those services. So this is This is not shocking no Microsoft announced that it's testing a cloud download feature for Windows 10 that would allow users to Reinstall Windows from a failed state by a download Microsoft offers a similar feature to quote recover from the cloud on quote on surface devices Feature isn't available for public testing and Microsoft did not say if it was coming to Windows Insider builds the verge speculates that it could be an important feature for Windows Lite and Windows Core OS Yeah, that's their Chromebook type Competitor that they want to get out there, you know for real simple laptops and That's meant for people who don't want to put remember to put in a USB drive and things like that You don't have a lot of room to keep Restore image on a partition like like you might usually It's not new to be able to do this third parties have done this OEMs have done this But having it come from Microsoft provides a certain amount of stability and uniformity It's also much more difficult for Microsoft to do this than Apple Apple does this already because Apple knows exactly what drivers It needs because it makes the hardware And and with Microsoft Windows Lite and Windows core OS they may have a better idea of the drivers They need so I wouldn't be shocked to see this go only for light or core OS at the beginning anyway It's a little bit difficult to try to cover all the driver needs across multiple OEMs So that might be why we're not seeing this in the Windows Insider builds too I agree and I think that for the lighter ones. It makes a lot of sense. There's less modifications that are done to to those kinds of Devices and the consumers are far different than your traditional PC user And dare I say Tom that it might be a little bit of it just works from the Microsoft side That you're just able to do something a little bit simpler by way of the man by way of the OS manufacturer. Yeah, I mean Yes On the other hand that we're talking about a feature that is generally only needed when your computer is fully crashed So you're coming from it didn't work at all to That's what exactly you're right. You're right. Absolutely And Germany's data protection commissioner announced it is investigating Google's practice of hiring contractors to review audio snippets from Google Assistant In order to improve speech recognition. This is something we've talked about in regard to the Amazon Echo It is something that there have been reports on regarding Apple's Siri Contractors have reported in Google's case hearing conversations accidentally recorded when the assistant was triggered by mistake And that's happened with Amazon and Apple as well Google says it will stop audio reviews and transcription in Europe for at least three months during this investigation And Google says it only has been reviewing around zero point two percent zero point two not two percent Of clips and does not associate them with accounts. This is a bugaboo though, right? Nobody cares whether their voice was in here Nobody cares what the percentage was all they care about is hearing wait Google was listening to conversations They could have heard me say a thing accidentally. They could have heard me do a thing accidentally I don't like that and the other side of this though Justin is This is the way you improve these assistants That's why all three companies that are major manufacturers of these voice assistants are doing it you take a very small sample you don't associate it with any user information and You review it to see like oh, how well did it do? That's how you train these supervised learning a eyes now some day We'll have unsupervised learning and you won't have to do this But that's not how they work right now And if you want them to work better and better you have to do this One of the big problems is of course that well They didn't tell me they were doing it or they told me in a weird way and I didn't understand or they kind of hid that They were doing it etc. etc. Well, let's Say, okay, they all improve their privacy policies to make it clear that they're doing this. Are you still uncomfortable with it? I'm not but the divide here is between people that listen to this show who are very smart and Normies who are scared and frightened by technology or rather they are scared and frightened when they realize that technology is indeed Building upon systems and not magic that you're not just getting a magic cylinder that knows all these things But but rather this is something that needs to get better and better and indeed It's the reason why some of these assistants are better at recognizing voices than other assistants because they are constantly improving The problem that we that we face here is of education and it reminds me a lot of bad targeting or cookies That tech people know about But the average person is like wait a minute I was I was literally just thinking about this thing and next thing, you know, it shows up on my on this website that I didn't even Type it into and it's like yeah, because you're being followed around and the stuff You search for is being served to you on ads for websites that have nothing to do with where you search for it before It is about education and I do understand that now that we live in a world where these devices are fairly indispensable for a lot of households They're tied into Internet of things devices people like them people use them I know now that I have a bunch of friends of mine with kids They are absolutely just a part of the household for the children That now you can say very open and honestly Would you like to opt in to have your voice at this thing totally anonymized be a part of making this product better? I think a lot of people would sign up for it in a way that they might not have When these were first getting off the ground three right and come on the tech companies can't be shocked about this, right? For for years for years when you launch software or install a new OS you get the prompt Hey, would you like some of your information to be sent to Microsoft slash Apple slash Google to help us improve the product? Check yes or no, right? They they learned back then they're like yeah We need this to make the product better But we should always ask first just to make sure and I think that's the brilliant solution to this just have When you set up these things say like hey, you know It's probably not going to happen, but sometimes we may anonymously review your recordings to make sure they're working That's going to make sure that accidental recordings don't happen more often. Are you cool with that? Yes or no Yeah Companies don't want to do that because they don't want to have to deal with tracking which snippets they can use or not right now They can just pull zero point two percent out without thinking about it makes life easier. I get it But you know what people are upset about this so you're gonna have to deal with it Hey folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Professors from the University of Surrey and a Missouri based inventor of a product called Davis AI you may have heard Davis AI creating art Have filed patents in the United Kingdom Europe and the United States in the name of Davis AI Not the inventor not the professors saying this patent should be attributed to the artificial intelligence that created it Davis AI has two patents one for designing interlocking food containers using fractal designs That make it easier for a robot to grasp and move around that could be useful in tons of production lines It also is designing a warning light that flashes in a rhythm that mimics neural activity making it harder to ignore So sometimes you just get used to the like constant flashing of an alert and you're like and you forget that it's there, right? This would flash in a way that would be harder for you to get used to that's a really useful invention But patent authorities generally require a person as the author of an invention So there is no patent authority right now that is saying. Oh sure. No, we'll grant it to an artificial intelligence agents Right and the beneficiary of will of course be the owner of that agent whoever that is BBC has a full article about this with some some fairly, you know Non-committal stuff from the UK and the US but a spokeswoman for the European patent office told the BBC that for the foreseeable future AI is a tool used by a human inventor Which that that's an interesting way to look at it because it's like okay But then if your tool invents something your tool makes something happen Do you get credit for that or does the tool? Because I can think about this in a way. That's like oh well these this guy invented the AI He's running the AI have made the thing he should get credit for the patent right but an AI can be copied and distributed And so if that AI is now used by me or you does he get the credit or do I get the credit? Well, alright, so there's a couple things here and and and let's take them from the most practical first What is a patent for like what what disputes do a patent mediate? Primarily, it's who owns the thing and if two people are doing it we now have a record to say, okay You stop doing it Right furthermore and the point being you want to encourage people to invent things So you want someone to think like well if I spend time working on this invention I will be able to reap the benefits for a particular period of time around, you know 10 to 14 years depending on the country, right? And and furthermore to be able to have a database to check Oh, has anybody done blank and you look around you're like, okay It doesn't look like anybody's done blank or called it blank or had to be blank so Does it benefit an AI to have a patent or does it benefit the person who generates or directs the AI? To have the patent because the AI is not going to be discouraged from inventing things. Yeah, right But would you as the operator of the AI be discouraged from using the AI to invent things if you couldn't patent it? Or The greatest patent holder in the world is AutoCAD and photoshop, right? Yeah What are we in a situation where hey, guess what AI can create new things? We'll never have a situation where there is a disincentive to create Because everyone can have an AI So we don't need to encourage inventions because they're so easy to come about and furthermore The AI can know to stay away from certain things because you could probably just Check it against the list of available patents and say, okay Yeah, just do everything except what I can't do because We're gonna we're gonna block off these possible solutions So if you're getting close to these solutions understand you have to go further in a different direction Yeah, I'm actually fascinated by this idea that uh, you could have So many you could have AI because it's infinitely copyable right distributed across the globe making inventions And if you and and and the reason for patents is to be like, yeah But if we don't protect patents then people won't create things But you could point to this and say like yeah, but that's not a problem anymore Because the ai's are just inventing things all day long whether you want them to or not you just run it And and and so why wouldn't someone want to invent something and then just share it out You you don't need that many people running ai's for that to happen Maybe you don't need the patent system anymore Well, I mean, all right. Oh, hold on. Hold on. I know it's crazy. It's crazy talk. I get it Let's let's let's let's let's let's let's stay in a world where we do keep the patent office All right, let's bring it let's bring it back to modern day where the patent person is like, yeah Okay, maybe someday right but right now I have to figure out this interlocking food container. Does it go to the Missouri based inventor of davis ai? Does it go to the professors? Or does it go to nobody? Do do I say like well, that's the interesting idea the interesting idea is that if it's not to the ai Which theoretically cannot reap the benefits of of such a distinction But rather the people who initially created the ai now that would Encourage creation of ai's with very specific skill sets right and these have used because then the patents would on some level Be going to the people that created the initial ai Well, and then but then nobody's going to want to use it to create inventions because they're like well If I create an invention those other guys that created this ai so then you go back to saying, okay What about the owner the person who's running that instance of the ai? Well, I mean would people I mean if it took you five minutes to do it instead of five years and But then I suddenly I can I'm restricted from using the thing that my ai just invented because The creators of that ai are like hey look you do what you want. Just make well if they do But but you know companies companies but the companies aren't going to do they're gonna be like yeah fred go ahead We might own it. No, they're gonna be like if we're not sure we own it No, no we own a specific I think there's there's a tremendous business to say that you just own 10 percent of everything that gets created or Well, that's different than what you were just describing The deal is like that's what I was trying to get we'll make an agreement where you can have this ai But we own 10 percent of every patent that you get out of it sure then that could work. Yeah. Yeah Uh, but but that's that should that be the law should you be allowed to do that? Or should it be like no if if you're running the ai then you are the person using the tool And therefore you should get the credit for any patent that comes out of that look for right now Uh as as anybody who deals with uh algorithms or artificial intelligence will tell you Uh, these are systems that although they are remarkable Also take a lot of direction to point them where you want them to go. These are not magic. They are not free thinking Uh, you know consciousness is that you know come up with brilliant things at the speed of computing Uh, you see they still very much at this point are tools But 10 years in the future Yeah, we might be in a different position because obviously it is going in in a different direction and they are being honed More and more by people that are creating these systems and to bring it back to today If you're like, oh, well then for now no problem. It's just the person using the ai that gets the patent. No That's the issue Uh, and we we kind of danced around this issue But the issue is if the ai creates it you didn't and patent law the way it's written right now Won't give you the patent for that because you didn't make it And and and so there's basically just no patent law to deal with the situation because it wasn't a possible situation Tools couldn't make things in the future if you made something with a tool you had to design it But if you're like, well my tool designed it now the patent office is like, oh, so you didn't design it I can't give you the patent, but I can't give it to anybody So the upshot is governments are going to have to come up with new laws To to or patent offices might have to come up with new regulations to say in the case that an ai designed it We are going to give the credit this way But there is no way to deal with it right now in the way patent law is written either way from beyond the grave Thomas Edison in shambles Yeah, yeah, and uh, nicola tesla still mad at him It's still in love with the pigeon. Yes Hey, uh, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show To reddit.com and facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show. Let's check out the mailbag We've got a couple things about that ac shirt, man. Y'all love the air conditioned shirt because it's so hot I get it Mark wrote in and said I wanted to pass along an interesting thought about that air conditioned shirt from sony This sort of thing would be very useful in certain medical situations My wife had ms and avoiding overheating was an important thing Traditionally using cooling bands draped over the shoulders had been used However, if this shirt type system works well enough to just avoid getting too hot Even possibly while getting some exercise and is reasonably priced It could be a big win for folks who have a medical need to avoid overheating ms being just one kind of case That's an excellent thought mark and then Jeff wrote in and said i'm currently getting caught up on miss dts Episodes while grading my students tech lit portfolios and where I live right outside Tokyo. It's currently 36 degrees celsius That's about 97 fahrenheit with a heat index above 40, which is 104 fahrenheit Summers are hot and humid here in japan and I would be more than happy to try out the rion pocket for dts Thank you. Jeff I let us know how it goes if you're able to get get one And and how it goes we we'd love to hear more from jeff trying out the rion pocket and back to back to mark Really good insight on what it might be good for beyond just keeping yourself cool Thanks to everybody who is emailing us feedback at daily tech news show calm and thanks to you. Justin robert young Indeed tom always a pleasure to be here and I would like to give a real big shout out to any of our big tabletop fans Out there in the dts audience if you happen to be heading out to gen con Then I want to let you know that I will be there too and you can come see me talk Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. In the convention center room 111 I'm doing my talk on how to lose 40 000 on kickstarter and how me and my co-creator john teesdale made it all back And then some and then on saturday night 8 p.m Playing with politics designing games you almost certainly know we'll start fights That is also at the convention center room 232 talking about how we made our game the contender and the very specific design decisions We made when you are theming your game around something that means so much to people and is such a hot button topic like politics are Folks this is independent tech news What you see is what you get pretty much everybody that works on the show is on the show Sarah was off today because she has to have another job But this this show is done by us And the funding comes from you. 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